The short answer
Ongoing social media management in Singapore is typically quoted under S$1,500 a month for a light single-channel scope, S$1,500 to S$3,000 for a real weekly cadence on one or two channels, S$3,000 to S$6,000 once regular original video and multi-channel work are involved, and S$6,000 and above where social media drives revenue. Most SMEs here land in the S$1,500 to S$3,000 band.
That is the number. The rest of this page explains why the same brief can land anywhere across a fourfold spread, because the spread is not arbitrary. Almost all of it comes down to one line item, and it is not the one most proposals put on the first page.
Where these figures come from, and where they do not
Our conflict of interest, stated plainly
Launch Media Studios is a Singapore social media and content studio. We sell the thing this page prices, so read it accordingly. The reason to keep reading is that every band below is the same band we use on our social media management page and in our guide to the agencies operating here. One set of numbers, used everywhere, checkable against each other in about a minute. That is a low bar, and it is one most of this category currently fails.
What actually drives the price
Post count is the worst possible basis for comparison, and it is the one almost every proposal leads with. Sixteen posts a month can cost S$1,200 or S$5,000 depending on where the material comes from. These are the drivers that genuinely move a quote, ranked by how much and how often each one moves a typical organic management fee.
| Driver | How much it moves the fee | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Original shooting | Can double or triple the total | It is the only line made of real crew hours on a real day. Nothing about it gets faster with practice. |
| Number of channels | +10% to +40% per added channel | Planning and shooting are shared across channels. Formats are not, so the cost depends on whether the new channel reuses the existing format. |
| Writing per platform, or reposting | +10% to +20% | Four native captions is four writing jobs. One caption reformatted four ways is one, and it reads like it. |
| Language coverage | +10% to +25%, more if the shoot repeats | A second language is a writing and casting decision, not a translation task. Sometimes it means filming the segment twice. |
| Community management hours | +S$300 to S$900 a month | Priced in hours of human attention and in how fast a reply is promised, not in anything you can see on the feed. |
| Paid media management | 10% to 20% of ad spend, floor around S$500 to S$1,000 | Only applies if you run ads, and then the ad budget itself is a separate and usually larger line. |
| Reporting depth | +S$150 to S$400 a month | The cheapest line to fake and the most expensive to do properly, because real attribution means touching your enquiry data. |
Original shooting, by a wide margin
Every other line on a proposal can be made cheaper by someone working faster or by a template. Shooting cannot. A day is a day: a crew, a location, gear, setup, resets, and someone directing. Quoted standalone in Singapore, a short-form batch day runs about S$2,000 to S$5,000 and produces roughly eight to twenty finished vertical cuts, which is the same range we publish on our video production page. Inside an ongoing retainer the same day is cheaper, roughly S$1,200 to S$2,500 of the monthly fee, because the format is already established, pre-production does not restart every month, and a repeating format needs a smaller crew than a one-off concept. Hold on to that number, because the rest of this page keeps returning to it.
This is why two agencies can quote the same post count at wildly different prices without either of them being dishonest. A brand with a usable library of existing footage and a brand starting from nothing are not the same job, and no amount of comparing deliverable counts will surface that difference.
Channels, and why the fourth costs more than the second
Adding a channel that reuses the format you already shoot, Instagram Reels alongside TikTok for example, adds perhaps 10% to 15%: it is a re-cut, a fresh caption and a separate posting slot. Adding a channel that needs its own format, such as LinkedIn written posts or YouTube long-form, adds closer to 25% to 40%, because it introduces a second production line rather than a second destination. That is the whole reason a five-channel scope at a two-channel price is a warning rather than a bargain: something is being mirrored, not made.
Writing, and language coverage
Writing per platform costs more than reformatting one caption, and the gap has widened rather than narrowed as generated copy became free. Anyone can now produce four variants in seconds; what still costs money is somebody who knows what your customers actually ask before they buy. A second language sits just below this in impact, and is routinely underestimated: Mandarin content for a Singapore audience is a writing and casting decision, not a translation of the English, and if the on-camera segment has to be filmed twice the driver above it reappears and dominates again.
The three quiet lines
- Community management. Usually the quietest line in a proposal and the first one clients notice missing. Replies in the first hour materially affect how far a post travels on TikTok and Instagram, so this is not admin, it is distribution. Expect S$300 to S$900 a month of the fee depending on hours covered and the response window promised.
- Paid media management. Charged at roughly 10% to 20% of ad spend with a floor of about S$500 to S$1,000 a month on small accounts. The budget itself is separate and larger. It ranks low here only because it is optional, not because it is small.
- Reporting depth. A platform screenshot costs nothing to produce. A report that connects posts to enquiries costs S$150 to S$400 a month of analyst time, because it means touching your enquiry data rather than the platform dashboard. It is the smallest line on the list and it decides whether you can judge every other line.
The same sixteen posts, twice
Brand A publishes sixteen posts a month on one channel. The assets are product photos it already owns plus templated graphics, one caption is written and reused, comments are checked twice a week, and the report is a platform screenshot. That scope lands under S$1,500.
Brand B publishes sixteen posts a month across three channels. There is one batch shoot day a month, captions are written natively per platform, half the video is subtitled in Mandarin, comments and messages are answered every weekday within a few hours, and the monthly report ties enquiries back to specific posts. That scope lands in the upper half of S$3,000 to S$6,000.
Identical post counts, roughly a fourfold difference in fee, and almost all of the gap is the shoot day and the hours that cluster around it. If you take one thing from this page, take this: compare shoot days, never posts.
The bands in detail
These are the same four bands we use everywhere on this site. What follows is the deeper version: what each band actually contains, line by line, rather than a one-sentence summary.
| Monthly band | Shooting | Channels and writing | Community and reporting | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under S$1,500 | None committed. Existing photos, templated graphics, repurposed clips. | One channel. One caption written per piece and reused. | Ad hoc checks. Platform-native metrics only. | Very early brands, or a coached in-house setup where the system is built once and your own team runs it. |
| S$1,500 to S$3,000 | Roughly one batch day a quarter, or a short monthly session. About S$400 to S$800 a month of the fee. | One or two channels at a weekly cadence. Captions adapted per channel. | Comments and messages answered on weekdays. Monthly report with commentary and a change list. | SMEs establishing a presence they intend to hold for at least a year. |
| S$3,000 to S$6,000 | A monthly batch day, roughly S$1,200 to S$2,500 of the fee. | Two to four channels, written natively per platform, second language possible on one of them. | Same-day weekday replies, sales enquiries routed to you. Reporting tied to enquiries, not impressions. | Brands treating social media as a real acquisition channel. |
| S$6,000 and above | Multiple shoot days, talent, locations, higher production values. | Multi-channel and multi-market, written per market rather than per platform. | Extended hours cover with an escalation path. Attribution beyond platform reporting. | Brands where social media drives revenue and a bad month is visible in the P&L. |
Where the money goes inside a band
Take the middle of the S$3,000 to S$6,000 band. Indicatively, production takes 35% to 50% of it, planning and writing 20% to 25%, community management 10% to 15%, reporting and account management 10% to 15%, and the remainder is overhead and margin. That last part is not a dirty word: an agency operating without a margin is an agency that will not be there in month twelve, and mid-retainer collapses cost clients far more than the margin ever did.
Run the same arithmetic downward and the floor explains itself. At S$1,200 a month, once tools, account management and one round of revisions are paid for, a team has perhaps a day and a half of blended working time. A day and a half cannot contain a shoot day. That is the entire reason we say an agency retainer below roughly S$1,500 is usually worse value than paying once for a system and training your own team to run it, and it is why that sentence appears on our service page too.
One caution about the top band
What is billed on top
This is the section that decides whether a retainer feels fair in month three. None of the items below are unreasonable to charge, and all of them are unreasonable to discover in an invoice. Ranges are typical Singapore pass-through costs, quoted per job.
| Item | Typical cost | What to check before signing |
|---|---|---|
| Advertising budget | Paid to the platform. Meaningful test from S$500 to S$1,500 a month | That it is stated as separate from the fee, and who holds the payment method. |
| Ad management fee | 10% to 20% of spend, floor about S$500 to S$1,000 a month | Whether a percentage fee also applies to boosted organic posts. |
| Boosted posts | Whatever budget you set, charged by the platform | That "boosting included" means the budget, not just someone pressing the button. |
| Influencer and creator fees | Nano creators from about S$80 to S$400 per deliverable, micro S$300 to S$1,200 | Whether management of creators is inside the retainer or a separate line. |
| Licensed music | About S$20 to S$60 per track, or S$150 to S$600 a year for a library subscription | That platform audio libraries are not used in anything that will run as a paid ad. |
| On-camera talent | Around S$300 to S$800 for a half day, more for experienced presenters | Usage rights. Organic-only usage is cheaper than a paid-media buyout, and the difference is large. |
| Studio hire | Roughly S$80 to S$250 an hour, or S$500 to S$1,500 for a full day | Whether the quoted shoot day assumes your premises or a hired space. |
| Permits and location fees | From a few hundred dollars per location, into four figures for managed venues | Lead time as much as cost. Some venues need weeks, and some simply say no. |
| Extra revisions and rush work | Quoted per instance | How many revision rounds are included by default, and what counts as one. |
Two of these cause most of the arguments. The first is advertising budget, where a proposal that quotes "S$2,000 a month including ads" is either taking a management fee out of your media spend or is not including much media. The second is music and talent usage rights, where content produced for organic use gets boosted six months later and the licence silently no longer covers it. Neither is exotic. Both are avoided by asking the question before you sign rather than after. If creators are part of your plan, the influencer marketing page breaks those fees down properly, because they behave nothing like a retainer.
Agency, freelancer or in-house
The honest comparison is not the headline monthly number, it is the number plus everything the quote cannot show you. Each of these three routes has a real hidden cost, and they are different in kind rather than in size.
| Route | Typical monthly cost | The costs that do not appear in the quote | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer | S$800 to S$2,000 for management, plus S$800 to S$1,500 per shoot day | You supply direction, quality control and chasing. No cover for illness, travel or resignation, and no second opinion. One person rarely shoots, edits, writes and reports at a consistent standard. | You have a clear brief, one channel, and someone internally who can art-direct. |
| In-house hire | S$3,500 to S$5,000 salary, roughly S$4,200 to S$6,200 all in | Employer CPF at 17% for staff aged 55 and below, annual leave and public holidays, software of S$100 to S$300 a month, equipment, recruitment, and the management time to direct them. The channel stops when they leave. | The content depends on deep product knowledge and daily access to your team. |
| Agency retainer | S$1,500 to S$6,000 for most SMEs | A minimum viable retainer exists and it is around S$1,500. Onboarding lag of three to four weeks before the first output, roughly two hours a month of your own time, and the risk that the senior who pitched is not the person who runs the account. | The work depends on production capacity and platform craft rather than internal knowledge. |
Read the in-house row carefully, because it is the comparison most often done badly. A S$4,000 salary is not a S$4,000 cost: employer CPF alone adds about S$680 a month at that level, and leave means you are paying for roughly eleven months of output. More importantly, you are buying one skill set. Someone who shoots, edits, writes and plans well at that salary is genuinely rare, and most strong candidates are excellent at two of the four. An agency at the same monthly number gives you those four skills as separate people, and gives up availability and product knowledge in exchange.
The freelancer row fails differently. It is often the best value on paper and frequently the right answer, particularly at the lower bands. What it cannot absorb is a bad week. There is no second person, so a delayed edit becomes a missed posting slot, and a resignation becomes a stopped channel with no handover. That risk is worth paying to remove only once the channel matters commercially.
Spotting an underpriced quote
A quote 40% below market is not a discount on the same work. Nobody in this category is sitting on a 40% margin to give away, so the difference has to come out of hours, and the hours it comes out of are remarkably predictable. Knowing which ones lets you check a proposal in ten minutes rather than discovering it in month three.
- The shoot day becomes a "content day". Two hours with a phone at your office, counted in the deck exactly as a crewed batch day would be. This is the biggest single saving available and therefore the first thing cut.
- Original becomes repurposed. Stock footage, your own older posts recycled, supplier material, and carousels counted as ten pieces of content because they have ten slides.
- Writing collapses to one caption. Generated wholesale, reformatted per channel, and recognisable within about three posts by anyone who reads your feed.
- Community management goes unstaffed. It stays in the scope as "up to" some number of responses, which is a deliverable that can lawfully go to zero.
- Seniority disappears after the pitch. The strategist you met sells; a junior with nine other accounts runs it. Not automatically wrong, but it should be priced as such and disclosed.
- Reporting reverts to screenshots. Impressions and follower growth, nothing connecting to enquiries, so the thinness never becomes visible in a document.
- The contract gets longer. Twelve month lock, sixty day notice. When the work cannot hold a client, the terms have to.
The arithmetic test that settles it in a minute
Take the fee and subtract the shoot. A batch day inside a retainer costs roughly S$1,200 to S$2,500, and produces eight to twenty finished vertical cuts. So a proposal promising twenty original videos a month for S$1,200 all in has spent its entire budget on the shooting alone, before a single hour of planning, writing, posting, replying or reporting. There are only three possible explanations: the videos are not original, the day is not a day, or the fee will rise once you are onboarded. Ask which one, and watch how specific the answer is.
The words worth counting in a proposal
"Up to", "as needed", "where applicable", "subject to availability", "best effort". Each one converts a deliverable into something that can legally be delivered as zero. A scope with six of them is not a scope, it is a range with the bottom hidden. The fix takes one email: ask for the same scope restated as minimums, with shoot days per quarter given as a number and community management given as hours per week. An agency that intends to do the work will send it back the same day. An agency that does not will explain why minimums are not how they work.
When cheap is genuinely cheap
Sometimes a low number is real. A freelancer with low overhead and one client type has a genuinely lower cost base. An agency taking a portfolio piece in a category it wants to break into will discount deliberately. A new studio building a body of work will price to earn the case study, and we should disclose that we are early enough to be in that position ourselves. The distinguishing feature is not the price, it is the specificity: a real discount keeps the scope precise, keeps the shoot days numbered, and usually comes with an explicit statement of what has been left out. An unreal one offers the same deliverables as everyone else for 40% less and never mentions what changed.
Comparing two quotes properly
Two proposals at the same monthly figure routinely contain very different amounts of work. Before you look at the price at all, reduce both to the same six lines. Most of the time the winner changes once you have.
- Shoot days per quarter, as a number. Not "regular content shoots". If the answer is zero, you are comparing a graphics-and-captions retainer against a production retainer, and the prices are not comparable at all.
- Original versus repurposed assets per month. Count them separately. A carousel is one asset, not ten. A re-cut of last quarter's footage is repurposed, however good it looks.
- The writing unit. One caption reused, or one written per platform, and in which languages. Ask who writes it and whether a human edits what is generated.
- Community hours per week and the response window. "Weekdays, within four hours" is a commitment. "Community management included" is a word.
- Month four, deliverable by deliverable. Many quotes are priced around an onboarding burst: strategy deck, brand shoot, launch content. If the fee holds while the deliverables thin out after the first quarter, you are paying a retainer for a project.
- Exit terms and ownership. Notice period, minimum term, and what happens to accounts, raw footage and working files if you leave. The answer should be immediate and boring.
Then compute two numbers for each quote: cost per shoot day and cost per original asset. They are crude, and they are still far better than cost per post, because they measure the thing that actually costs money. A proposal that looks 20% more expensive per month but includes twice the shooting is usually the cheaper one per unit of work that will still exist in six months.
A last note on guarantees